Fortune Magazine's 2010 Business person of the year. Probably not a contender to win that title in 2011

POSTING BY JB MADDAWG

This Monday morning, something bizarre happened. Netflix, determined just last month to off itself in a blatant corporate suicide attempt, has been talked down off the ledge. Our old pal, Chief Executive of Netflix Reed Hastings, backtracked in a statement and is now cancelling the short-lived idea of separating DVD rentals from it’s streaming library.

Now, if you’ve been too busy reading little Timmy’s Breakfast Blog, then you probably missed the fact that we, at The Throwdown, were one of the few sites to bring this story to you right out of the gate. You can read Big Angry’s original article, here.

Netflix has watched its shares plummet around 60% since mid-summer and the company has already figured on millions in cancelled subscriptions. People can bitch on Netflix’s blog and the Facebook page all they want, but those deadly numbers, is what head slaps a company back into reality. So what say you, Reed Hastings?

“It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster.”

No apologies, no “yeah, we were pretty stupid to attempt this”, just a quick statement of course correction. All the folks that played Devil’s advocate for Netflix, can now rest assured that not even Netflix agrees with them anymore. I’d read plenty of things from the people who thought what Netflix was doing was a great idea, obviously, those people were either Netflix employees, or just incredible imbeciles. If you line up and wave you hands asking for a price increase or a reduction in service, let’s just put it out there, you’re an idiot.

The real question now is, how many customers that have abandoned Netflix will return? Our very own John Rantavius, dumped the service for Apple TV, and says he’s much happier.

“I knew I wasn’t staying with Netflix. As soon as I heard the news, it was over for me. I went and got a setup for Apple TV, which ran about $99, and I never looked back. The change has been just fine for me. Fuck Netflix.”

Now, take that with a grain of salt, readers, because as long as I’ve known Ranty, he’s an Apple addict. Although, many former Netflix subscribers may have had just that same idea…an alternate that has worked out, and really gives no reason to return to the service. Netflix customers have to be wondering if this is truly the end of wild shifts and changes in service, or will Reed Hastings just let the dust settle and pull the rug out from his customer base yet again?

Only time will tell if evil Reed will rise again. Until then, we’ll keep Throwin’ em down.

Ha! See…a true Throwdown reader that caught the veiled shot at Anonymous from the last Netflix post. Well, “Anonymous” claimed to be a big chess player. We like to refer to that move as “I just jumped your Queen”.